Rei Mooney

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Prepare Food and Beverages From Scratch

 Take the time to nourish your body and soul. Enjoy the entire process.

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Simplify

Whether it’s an over complicated skincare routine (unless this brings you joy, of course) or paper bills that could be made into automatic payments, there’s room to simplify to make room and time for the important things.

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Do a Digital Declutter

Declutter emails, photos, documents, apps, subscriptions, notifications and anything else bogging up your ether space to minimize the number of distractions and mental space these take up in your day. This frees up your mental space for the things that matter most to you.

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Declutter Your Home 

A wonderful quote from the film, Fight Club: “The things you own, end up owning you.” Things require space, time, and energy. Be mindful of your belongings. Own only things that are of significance to you or that serves a specific purpose. The fewer things you own, the fewer things you have to care for, think about, provide room for, pay rent for, etc.

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Limit Your To-Do List

 Keep your day to day goals realistic, attainable, and reasonable. Living slow means leaving room to breathe in your day.

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Be Patient

Savor the moments you have to wait by finding ways to enjoy them. A perfect example, is a pot of pour over coffee. The process of grinding the beans, letting the grounds bloom, then patiently pouring over the water as the coffee drips slow requires patience and time. It’s often easier to feel bothered by the waiting, our minds already focused on the next task we want to move onto. When we choose to focus on and enjoy the process with patience, we build an appreciation for the journey and work it takes for something to come into fruition.

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Stop Multitasking

Focus your efforts and attention on one thing at a time. There is an art to living slow, and it begins with immersing our attention fully on the task at hand.

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Do Everything With Joy

A slow living lifestyle encourages us to choose to enjoy life. Find the small joys in even the most menial everyday tasks.

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Give Your Undivided Attention

Although we are all so much more connected during this age of the internet, I sometimes I find myself less connected to those that are right there physically beside me. I’m so busy looking at my phone, that I’ve lost track of what someone is saying to me, or found myself scrolling my phone while watching a show with my fiancé, or answering a text or instagram comment while enjoying dinner with company. Not all of us (especially in these times) are able to be in the physical presence of our loved ones. If this is the case, by all means use technology to connect with them! Just make sure that when you are doing so, there are no other unintentional distractions, like glancing at your phone, running errands (if at all possible), or watching a movie you’re not watching together with them.

If you are in a position where you are able to interact physically with others, give them your full and undivided attention. Turn off your phone or put it away where it won’t bother you, turn off the TV, and turn your attention to enjoying your time with them. Have fun!

Slow Living Practice of the Day: Journal

We started our 31 Days of Slowing Down with a journaling practice, and today we’ll visit it again. Like our reading practice we’ll begin by removing electronics from the equation and write with a good old pen and paper. Write about things and hobbies you love, a good book you read, your loved ones, or anything else that resonates with what brings meaning and joy to your life. Or just journal about what’s on your mind (also known as stream of consciousness journaling) or what happened in your day. Gratitude journaling is also a wonderful way to appreciate all we’re blessed with. You can also use journaling as a manifestation technique using the law of attraction. To do this, you write while thinking and feeling as though you already have everything you ever wanted. If these ideas still leave you feeling stuck, a quick search for journaling prompts for mindfulness or self discovery will give you thousands of ideas! If you’re interested in learning more about the myriad benefits of journaling, check out Vanilla Papers, she has a wonderfully informative post.